


While you were frozen

by RausieStone



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Feelings, M/M, Marvel Universe, POV Multiple, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Stucky - Freeform, a whole lotta feelingzz, comatose Bucky, short fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-29 00:29:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21401176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RausieStone/pseuds/RausieStone
Summary: When Bucky stumbles across his cryo tank in storage, months after he’s been woken up, something strange captures his attention. Something on the tank that doesn’t belong there. Some things that are written on the glass itself. This is the story of how that happened.
Relationships: Bruce Banner/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Kudos: 39





	1. Steve

Steve looks from doctor Smith to Bucky’s frozen body, lying perfectly still in his glass box. His face appears more relaxed than Steve’s seen it this century. The thought and the awkwardness surrounding all this makes Steve back track a little. ‘’Are you certain he can hear me?’’

The doctor glances up from his notes with his eyebrows high. ‘’Not certain, no,’’ he admits. ‘’But it is possible. And if we’ve learned anything from comatose patients in the past, it’s that they perceive a lot more than we might assume. There’s no reason sergeant Barnes, on a subconscious level, won’t recognize your voice.’’  
Steve nods slowly at that, feeling a lot less skeptical but still a bit nervous. Especially with another person in the room. Even if it’s a doctor who only cares about the figures and stats of Bucky’s physical condition. His mind is far more occupied with figuring out how to fix Bucky. Steve could be crying on the floor, declaring his undying love for the man in the tank, and he probably wouldn’t notice.

When the doctor is finally done taking his notes, he puts away his stuff and turns to Steve. ‘’Alright,’’ he says. ‘’That’s it for today.’’ He continues with a goodbye and leaves the room.

Steve watches the door closely for a moment before turning his gaze back to Bucky. The room had felt crowded to him just a minute ago. But now the silence seems to ring in his ears.

What was he supposed to do? Supposed to say?

Steve shakes his head. Maybe he was overthinking this… Maybe he should just start talking…

‘’Buck,’’ his voice sounds strange to his ears. But he’s not sure if it’s because of the ringing silence around him, or because he feels so nervous.

Nervousness. Yeah, what’s that all about even? Steve feels it more and more each day. Like the deeper and longer Bucky slept, the more unsettling Steve’s nerves became. It has only been a week and it already feels unbearable.

And T’Challa’s watchful eye isn’t making things better either. It seems like his already intense gaze turns even more merciless whenever Steve mentions Bucky. Which he does way too much – even Steve himself realizes that. He knew one of the doctors was even considering quitting from Bucky’s medical team. He had been clear on more than one occasion that he didn’t like the steady stream of questions and inquiries Steve kept on making about his friend. Though he really hadn’t meant to offend the doctor. He was just worried. This was the only way he knew how to deal with that. Even if that way was a little – okay, a _lot_ – crazy.

And in this he has his answer he realizes. ‘’Bucky, I gotta tell you, I’m kind of going crazy hereLL,’’ he admitted to the only person he actually wanted to talk to about this. The only one whose opinion he cared about when it comes to this. The one person who knows Steve better than anyone …or knew, at least.

‘’God, I miss you so much,’’ he blurted out. Okay, he was definitely glad Bucky wasn’t awake to comment on that. ‘’I shouldn’t say that, I know,’’ he backtracked – for more than one reason. ‘’I know this was the best choice for you. And your own choice, which is the most important thing. I know it will make time fly by while we find a cure for your… condition.’’ Steve stops short, having to take a minute. He swallows loudly, trying to fix his dry mouth but not really able to. He closes his eyes and balls his hands into tight fists. ‘’And I know I’m being selfish in wishing you were here, awake, with me. But I need you, buddy.’’

So, that wasn’t all that bad. He had finally admitted it out loud. Probably everybody else knew already, but anyway…

He looks at Bucky’s sleeping face. It doesn’t seem restless, but not really calm either. He recognizes that sentiment all too well.

Steve just feels so stuck. So frustrated from waiting around like this.

Maybe Natasha was right; maybe he really did need a break from Wakanda. But what would he do? The Avengers were done. Thor and Hulk had dropped off the face of the earth. Tony would probably never talk to him again. And then there were all these new players… But Steve didn’t want any of it without Bucky.

He looks back at the man asleep in the tank. Suddenly he f feels desperate to be closer to him in any way possible. He reaches out his hand and touches the glass. ‘’Buck… you have no idea how lost I feel,’’ he says, feeling himself – madly – hoping that the man in the box will suddenly open his eyes and respond. Make it all right. Because this talking to a glass box was not making him feel any better.

He has to do something. Anything! Any other thing than just sitting around.

He wrecks his brain for an idea. He glances around the room, looking for inspiration. He desperately wants to do something with Bucky, for Bucky. Leave his mark somehow. Not leave Wakanda – for those many distracting missions that Natasha keeps tempting him with – before he knows how to leave Bucky with a part of himself. Something good he could think of every time he was desperate to go home…

Steve laughs at himself for that last thought; he’d only been here for a few weeks and already thought of Wakanda as his home. He looks back at the man in the glass box and is instantly reminded of why that was, why he feels that way. Any place where Bucky is, is his true home.

He could feel his hands starting to tremble, his fingers clutching air as they craved to hold something. He let his gaze make a last sweep around the room and a giggle slipped through his lips when his eyes fell on one particular object: a black marker. He stood up so fast his chair fell to the ground. But he paid it no mind as he was already striding across the room. He picked up the big writing tool and read the words engraved on the side. Supposedly, this marker could be used to write on any object. It was waterproof and can’t be washed out.

Steve looks back at the glass box with gleaming eyes, the most childish idea surfacing in his thoughts. With the casts people got when they broke a bone and the texts their loved ones would write on them in mind, he got to work.

He walks back over to Bucky and starts to write: _‘We’re all waiting for you, Buck. Wakanda is the best place for you to wake up, I believe that without a doubt. Till the end of the line and beyond my dearest friend. Love, Steve.'_

He takes a step back once he’s done, looking at the lines he has written in his best handwriting. It looks pretty good, he had to admit. He immediately started to feel better, he had to admit that too. Maybe he could ask others to the same thing. To leave personal messages for Bucky. Then again, maybe not.


	2. Sam

Everything was upside down. It didn’t make any sense anymore. Well… Not everything, just some things. It was all really _weird_. Yeah, that was definitely the best word to describe it. It was unbelievably weird that Sam thought more about the Winter Soldier now than in the whole two years he had been looking for the guy.

He blames it all on Steve of course. Naturally, he had warmed – a bit – to the long-haired emo-looking commy during the whole aiding and abetting thing. He had spent some time with him – while Steve was off arguing and fighting with Tony – that wasn’t entirely awful. But the fact that he actually considers Bucky a friend now, had nothing to do with that.

It was all Steve’s fault. If Sam – or anyone else for that matter – thought Bucky was exaggerating with all the doom and gloom during his darker times, then they had never been around Steve while Bucky was lying unconsciously in an ice tank. Captain America could pretty much pull an all-black superhero costume off without any surprised reactions. And his dark mood only intensified overtime. Sam had tried every possible distraction he could think of to make him feel better. But even the few things that had worked at first, never brightened his mood for long. He had tried it all; parties, going to the movies, flying (like actual flying!), pranking Natasha; being beat up by Natasha after the prank didn’t work out correctly (which was the only thing that got an actually laugh out of Steve); Natasha and Hawkeye pranking him (_multiple_ times – he really wasn’t making friends with this making-Steve-happy campaign); etc. etc. So he was literally at wit’s end. And that’s when he ended up in a certain hospital room with a certain patient in a certain glass box…

Sam felt in no way guilty or embarrassed when he took up a marker and started writing on it. _‘Better wake up soon, bro. Steve’s going crazy without you. And I know what you are thinking; the Falcon’s awesomeness can’t be topped, better to wait him out – I mean, what’s one lifetime of sleep more? And though that is very true, of course… No one wants a crazy Captain America. Like seriously dude! Wake up soon or I can’t guarantee you’ll have to go look for Stevo in the one and only luny bin of Wakanda. (jup, they have one; I checked). Greetings from the sky, Sam’_


	3. Natasha

Black Widow had an even blacker mind than usual without her big green friend to spark her softer and more hopeful side. She knew the way she was dealing with his absence wasn’t healthy. She knew how Steve was handling Bucky’s state wasn’t healthy either. But it just felt so much better than moving on – which seemed pretty much impossible.

If Steve was the wallowing-in-the-sheer-bleakness-of-the-situation type, then she was definitely the let’s-pretend-it-never-happened model. Pure classics, the both of them. Which pretty much resulted in the same thing: burying themselves in work. Whenever there was a mission, Steve and Natasha focused on it a 100%. Sam came along the first few times, but he quickly stopped when he realized how differently they approached missions than before. Or as he said it: ‘’You two took the tiniest portion of fun that was still in there, even if you didn’t try, and stomped on it till it died.’’

She ended up in Bucky’s hospital room during a time when even she couldn’t find a mission to obsess over. A time of waiting and doing nothing; something she did not do well. At least her best friend Clint had paid them a visit in Wakanda, but now that he was back home she didn’t even have him to distract her. And her mood got all the worse for it. 

She took up the marker after Sam ranted to her about how poorly she and Steve were dealing with their current loss. A reminder she did not welcome happily. She hid in one particular quiet hall in T’Challa’s grand home, wallowing in the suppressed emotions she never showed to anyone else, thinking she was totally alone there. But of course, that wasn’t the case. She stumbled on Bucky’s hospital room quite accidently, but stayed there for the quiet peace. 

After an hour of sulking while staring off into space, some scribbles on Bucky’s glass tank catch her eye. Natasha reads them with tears in her eyes – not that she would ever admit that to anyone – and grabs the marker from the nightstand. 

_‘I don’t really know you, but I do know Steve. And I know it’s scandalous how long it has taken me to admit this, even to myself, but he’s a better man when you’re around. I wish you two the best when you finally wake up. Love, Natasha’_

She wrote in tiny but elegant handwriting. A long way down on the tank, at the left side. The exact opposite from where Steve always sat next to Bucky when he visits him. 

Steve never mentioned her message to her. It would be logical if he had never managed to find it. But she wouldn’t be surprised if he would admit to her one day that he did. 


	4. T'Challa

T’Challa ended up in Bucky’s hospital room for quite a different reason than Natasha and Sam. He had just battled his nephew and was still taking in all the new truths he’d learned about his family. He was at quite a low point, thinking of his life, his country and his family. And most of all, his own place within it all. 

James Barnes’s calm and peaceful room gave him a place in the chaos where he could really think. His visits turned into a routine. A calming start of the day that gave him the opportunity to meditate. To think and feel everything in a safe environment. A place where he wasn’t alone, but not really among others either. 

All the changes his world had gone through needed a moment to settle for him. To click. To find a place within him, so he could accept them and move forward. 

After about three weeks of this he took up the marker. _‘Family is the most important thing in the world. But families come in all kinds, sizes and shapes. They aren’t simply flesh and blood, genes and personality trades. They’re the group of people you built a life with.’ He left some space between the lines and continued. ‘You are in a state of not-living right now, Soldier. You can’t do anything but wait. But I look around, look for you, and see the people you’ve attracted. To the group they’ve formed. And it’s quite a strong and loving family indeed.’ Another space. ‘Take as much time as you need. Your family will be waiting for you, for as long as it takes. And it will be bigger and tighter than before you went under – Humble, but awed words from a dark Panther to a dark Soldier.’_


	5. Clint

The fateful battle between the Captain and Iron Man had left Clint wanting to do something, anything. But that had barely anything to do with them, and everything with his best friend fighting alongside them. Getting into trouble, as usual. As she liked to do.

But the battle had long since been fought. And though with an ache in his heart for Nat, he had finally gone home and remained there. Nothing in the world, no mission whatsoever, would pull him away ever again. He would still play his part of course. In whichever way he could. But always at the side lines. His family now finally taking priority. As it should.

But that was until…

Until news of the greatest threat yet daring to come to earth. Thanos, had at long last revealed to be not just a fairy tale to scare children on far away planets. No, instead he was a very real being, who was gaining more power by the minute. And his next stop on his rise to universe domineering power, would very likely be earth. When this news was brought to him from Wakanda, his wife – who had been, at least partly, against every dangerous and far away mission since she got pregnant for the first time – was suddenly the first to insist for him to go. Go to Wakanda and ‘check out what was going on’.

It was not the first time he visited Wakanda. But it was the first time he stumbled across Bucky’s hospital room in the grand palace. He read every message on the tank and took up the marker, grinning widely. _‘Wow… and here I thought I needed an embarrassingly long recovery time after civil war. But duuuddeee, you top everything! You make the rest – okay, maybe just mostly me – feel down right fit, next to you. I mean to all those people we fight with and against (whichever day of the week, really) are like all gods and super humans. But not you and me. And I hate to break it to you (okay maybe not hate) but I’m looking a lot better than you right now!  
Anyway, just keep on napping away; more power to you. The world ain’t that awesome right now anyway. So yeah, you’re probably better off. Greetings from Hawkeye.’_

\--- 

‘’You can’t write that!’’ A young and beautiful girl suddenly yelled at him as he and Natasha we’re chilling in T’Challa’s kitchen. 

Clint was so surprised he almost dropped his coffee. Quickly he looked up again to see the girl approach with a furious look on her face. ‘’What… uh… Who the hell are you?’’

She stops right in front of him, resting her hands on her hips. ‘’I am Shuri,’’ she says. ‘’T’Challa’s sister and I’m calling you out on that awful message you wrote on Bucky’s tank right next to all the beautiful words his real friends wrote on there. You should be ashamed of yourself!’’ And with that she left. Leaving Clint looking stunned and spilling coffee on his shirt while Natasha laughed her ass off – for the first time in a very long while. 


	6. Shuri

It had been a long year of testing and researching for Shuri. Being at school abroad all year, she had not been there when Bucky arrived. But once she came back to Wakanda during summer she joined Bucky’s medical team. And spend many, many hours with him in the last few months. But for all the time she’d spend with the guy, it could never even rival Steve’s. 

But not only quantity was significant here. She was also working on the Winter Soldier’s case so closely, it resulted in her knowing practically everything about him. Probably even more than Bucky did himself. Definitely when it came to his ‘condition’ – as doctor Smith kept calling it, even though she and Steve kept throwing him dirty looks for it. They rather liked to call it a sleep – nice, long and well-deserved. 

And if Bucky could hear anything in that tank, he would know her better than anyone else, too. She had recited her whole life’s story more than once to him. Not to mention all her inner thoughts, dreams and feelings she said aloud while working on him. 

But alas; of course, Bucky couldn’t hear anything… probably. So after her last breakthrough in Bucky’s case, she finally took up the marker herself. 

_‘Don’t listen to Clint! For as sharp as he can see, Hawkeye is pretty stupid.’_ And then, at a wholly different place on the tank. _‘Hello Bucky, my name is Shuri and though I barely know you, it kind of feels like I do know you, you know? Okay, I’m probably not making much sense… But now the official written introductions are out of the way (haha), I feel like I’m not overstepping my boundaries when I say that I can’t wait to get to meet you. See you soon!’_


End file.
